1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus for inventory control, in general, and, more particularly, to a system for the maintenance, management and control of inventory. The invention allows inventory control by manufacturers, distributors, users and/or dealers for the purposes of optimized distribution; close control of and efficient collection for sold units; and generation of current sales data in order to project future sales strategy, marketing analysis, production planning, shipping and distribution planning.
2. Prior Art
Presently, the best-known automated inventory control systems are generally based on a coded pattern consisting of vertical bars known as a bar code pattern. This pattern is imprinted somewhere on the controlled item or its container. This system is used primarily with mass produced, low cost, consumable products. Each bar code pattern identifies a unique item.
Point-of-sale control is implemented with laser beam scanners which interface with a computer system to interpret the code pattern. Pricing and internal inventory maintenance can be established at the discretion of the individual user, controlled by the applicable software. Inventory control may be maintained with portable equipment consisting of a bar pattern scanner and a suitable storage device which can interface with the computer system. This results in a system which has a response time which can be significantly poorer than desired and errors by the human operator limit data integrity.
Often these known systems are used to monitor or control massive numbers of relatively inexpensive, consumable products with a single code to identify each item. The most familiar example to most persons is the supermarket checkout scanner and the UPC product codes. Characteristics of that application are rapid inventory turnover and sales of random combinations of such items in moderate quantities (e.g. 20-50) at frequent intervals. Sales and/or transactions take place at a checkstand attended by a cashier with immediate billing by distributors with short term payment by retailers and individual examination of each item with direct line-of-sight between the bar code pattern and the scanning device.
Most other existing inventory control methods involve direct (or actual) count of individual items. The resulting data may be further processed by computer. If computer processing is desired, the hand-counted information must be manually input into the computer. In retailing of durable goods, this category includes products sold in large numbers (10-20 million annually) with an immense economical impact to the inventory owner. Currently, this market incurs a large expense to control inventory and protect investments.
These types of products are relatively high cost, major purchase items (with individual serial numbers) that have extended floor time at the dealer's location and usually require financing of the dealer's inventory.
Each unit must be identified and tracked from manufacturer to distributer and into the dealer network until the time of sale. The procedure of inspection and identification by serial number is a labor-intensive, hands-on technique that is expensive for several reasons. In addition to the expense incurred in collection, the data is often flawed resulting in a faulty database for decision making. For example, warehouse control is imperfect. Thus, the distributor may have units which are not exposed for sale at the optimum time, resulting in a situation where many units remain unsold at the end of the model year. This frequently results in a requirement to shift models to other warehouse locations. Expenses are incurred for shipping, accounting, distribution and warehouse in/out charges. Unsold units in warehouses can accumulate storage fees and create a backlog of non-current models. In reasonable economic circumstances, these units must be discounted to encourage sales at the cost of lost profits. In difficult economic times, disposal of an excessive supply of non-current models is more difficult. In addition, serious problems in the introduction of new models to maintain competitive positions are created. Moreover, correction of errors is often necessary and creates handling and accounting expenses.
Control at dealer's locations is even more difficult. Floor check fees based on unit count make it difficult to count the inventory more than once a month. When the inventory is financed, a substantial amount of the money is tied up with attendant "cost-of-money expense" and collection activities depending on the inventory data. Thus, the system with infrequent checking suffers from errors and associated costs, but more frequent checking inserts errors made in the course of an inventory more frequently and imposes other expenses; it is thus not a solution.
The system has a number of significant error sources. Serial numbers may be misread, misunderstood, or transposed initially or in a subsequent tabulation. Similarly, units may be missed or missing during the counting process. Correction of these errors requires manpower expense by the dealer, checker and/or distributor. Furthermore, all of the data (good or bad) collected by the checkers must be processed for inputting into a computer system. The human factor inherently includes some errors and, thus, more expense to resolve them.
Units not truly part of the inventory may be included in the count. For example, units in for service; units owned by the dealer; units mistakenly paid for while unsold; or units missed in one check and counted subsequently. To check the checker is an additional expense.
Accounting data from the inventory count can be, of course, related to sales data. In many industries using this type of control system, there is considerable delay in receiving and assimilating the sales statistics. There are several ways to acquire this information: direct polling of dealers; tabulation of warranty registrations; and summary reports by commercial marketing statistics companies. The latter are typically one to two months out of date. Dealers are usually heavily involved with daily operations and not enthusiastic about gathering accurate sales figures. Dealers and customers are lax about completing and submitting warranty registrations. Distributors may update warranty reports only monthly. All of these information sources are off line, time consuming, expensive and inaccurate.
Lack of timely sales data can be costly. With outdated data, plus ensuing time to discover the problem and to plan and implement corrective action, plus delays receiving feedback data related to the results of the action taken, a sales campaign may totally founder. Likewise, shifting of various models to other locations may result in great expense with little return. Advertising effectiveness is diminished when dated information is used to control and monitor the resulting sales statistics.
In some industries there is little effective correlation between sales, production, shipping, warehousing and the like, based on up-to-date data. Hence, the problems of left-over models, stock in the wrong warehouse and the like are, to a great extent, built into the system. The economic consequences have been discussed previously.
It is clearly desirable to provide an inventory control and maintenance system which eliminates or reduces these problems in a cost effective fashion.